The present invention relates to the automation of technical systems; and in particular, to a method and apparatus for flexibly configuring an automation system according to user-selected fault detection capabilities.
In previously-known approaches to automating a technical process, the technical process and the automation system assigned to it (for example, a programmable controller) were configured on a case-by-case basis according to the needs of that particular application. Moreover, this configuration process was generally directed to handling only failures in the automation system itself, as opposed to faults in the process peripherals (that is, the peripheral channels of the technical process). This limitation held true even in those individual cases where detection of such peripheral faults was possible. Even today, no universally-applicable approach exists for handling peripheral faults, even though such faults represent by far the most common type of fault in automation.